``` LANGUAGE ======== The definitions in the book that follows have been plagiarised from various dictionaries (because that's basically where they keep all the definitions so like what the fuck other option is there, it's not like there's a bunch of "free-range definitions" just running around all over the place or whatever) and then modified by the terrorists (us) without hesitation or attribution because fuck you we're terrorists and also because who can even remember which dictionary you got a word from there's like a billion of those goddamn things. The resulting definitions -- spanning a wide range of topics and having been created in a state of total linguistic freedom -- constitute what we might call "free-range definitions." There's a bunch of them running around in here. Feel free to use them in like, life and stuff. They're ours, but they're also yours. Cuz freedom. Okay, end of thing. Love and kisses, ~The terrorists. ------------------------------- P.S. (noun) Abbreviation for "Pretentious Shit." We'll try to leave this out whenever possible. ------------------------------- P.P.S. The freedom-y language-y rule-ish type things (or lack thereof) mentioned above also apply to like, grammar and stuff. We'll probably occasionally call this "syntax" instead of "grammar," which admittedly might sound like an instance of P.S. (see above), but really it's just cuz the word "grammar" reminds us of school (the old kind (the kind before terrorism)) and thus makes us tired, whereas the word "syntax" reminds us (or at least me) of like, programming and stuff, which makes we/I less tired. Negatively tired actually. Like, the type of thing that you enjoy and so it gives you energy. Plus English is just a really weird programming language anyway, and we're not really using it to anything like its full potential blah blah shut up self okay anyways let's just start writing and see how it goes. Love and kisses (again), ~The terrorists (again). ------------------------------- P.P.P.S. (Or: P³S) In the above sentence... like, the one where we/I said, "The freedom-y language-y rule-ish type things (or lack thereof) mentioned above also apply to like, grammar and stuff," the term "stuff" should be understood to be a variable whose value is (for our present purposes) equal to: Syntax, Semantics, Phonetics, The boundaries between languages (e.g., english vs schwinglish, for any value of schwinglish), The boundaries between natural languages and formal logics, The boundaries between natural languages and other symbolic systems of expressing stuff, The boundaries between letters, The boundaries between words, The boundaries between different orthographies, The boundaries between speech and sound, The boundaries between the pronunciation that one group of modern parochial potato people (or: P3) says is how-you're- supposed-to-be-pronouncing-such-and-such versus all other candidate pronunciations (including but not limited to how people actually pronounce the thing for fuck's sake), and especially the boundaries between the colloquial and the formal. There's probably gonna be a lot of free-range versions of that stuff running around in here too. Not really sure how this is gonna work out. Either way, try not to trip. In any sense of the term. ------------------------------- P⁴S. Almost forgot. Regarding the above-mentioned thing about stealing definitions from dictionaries, this whole "hey-we're-terrorists-so-we-get-to- redo-academia-(and-civilization-(and-the-fabric-of-spacetime-(and-god-(and- your-mom-(or-whatever)))))-all-from-scratch-cuz-we're-terrorists-so-haha-fuck- you-but-not-really-we-just-like-talking-like-that-but-it's-not-actual- aggression-so-don't-worry-we-love-you-anyway" thing matters a lot to us... like, a seriously lot... so in order to ensure that it gets to live as long as possible -- even if it doesn't get to live for very long -- just, in order to keep this alive as long as we can, we'll try our best amidst the rule-flouting to also be decent people. And we may fail at that sometimes, but we'll try as hard as we can. For example, despite the above-mentioned thing about stealing definitions from dictionaries (that was how this whole P⁴S deal started, remember?) we should probably have some system where we can say "hey, um, dear reader person, I got this bit from someone else so don't worry I'm not taking credit for it (and so on)." However, these days the world's got this big dynamic repository of human knowledge, and its internal organization is always changing, which makes saying "hey reader here's where I got this from" kind of tricky and expiration-prone, even in cases where the overall set of information on [thing] is relatively stable. Like for example, in 10 years there are still gonna be chickens.[A] -------- [Footnote A: There will be, I promise.[RB]] [Recursive Footnote B: And if you happen to be a vegetarian and find the chicken example offensive, just replace chicken with "bread."[RRC]] [Recursive Recursive Footnote C: And if you're offended by the word "bread" because it's English, just replace it with "pan."[RRRD]] [Recursive Recursive Recursive Footnote D: And if you don't like the underrepresentation of undercooked materials in the last few sentences, just go with "dough." (In any case, it's the same principle. (Try not to be confused by words. (Most of the time when we get confused by words, it's probably not because the speaker is like, "crazy" or "dumb" or "basically just spouting random nonsense." (Usually in those cases we're just misunderstanding what the speaker is saying. (Keep that in mind. (Okay, enough silly sermon shit. Let's pop our way back up this stack.))))))] -------- So, using the word chickens as a variable to refer to [whatever-your-preferred- example-is], here's the point. Fast forward ten years. You in the future yet? Okay good. See how it's pretty much the same as now, but like, later? Exactly. Okay, so now that it's 10 years in the future, there probably won't have been any overwhelming paradigm-shifting breakthroughs in our species collective knowledge about chickens in the previous 10 years (i.e., since now). To a pretty good approximation, our knowledge about the odd little people we call chickens is gonna be the same set of information then (i.e., in the future) as it is now (i.e., now). However, in spite of the relatively locally semi-timeless-ish nature of our species' collective knowledge about [chicken-variable], once we find ourselves in the future, we may discover that all the most easy-to-find information on [chicken-variable] might not look even kinda similar, at least in terms of where it is, or what sentences it uses, or which [chicken-variable] instances are in the pictures next to the text. The modern state of human knowledge is constant (to zeroth order) and moving forward quickly (to first order), but the modern organization of that knowledge is churning like crazy, and facts like "dear reader, here's where [such-and-such] is" don't stay true for very long anymore, at least for a sizable chunk of human knowledge, and that's true even for relatively stable topics like [chicken-variable]. And citing a churn-y medium like that in a more stable medium like paper is pretty much guaranteed to just make said paper-thing less timeless. And we like timeless. I mean seriously, fuck time. Time is the worst. And so we, as responsible terrorists who love science and knowledge and learning and life and not-being-a-dick-to-other-good-people-by-taking-credit- for-stuff-they-wrote-that-we-didn't-write -- in our capacity as responsible [that]s, we should probably figure out some way of saying -- in a medium like paper -- something like, "Okay here's the deal, I got this particular bit of information from somewhere else and it's not something I wrote or am taking credit for, but it may have been written by like N anonymous people collaboratively for some large and unknowable value of N, and it might not even say the same words in like a week, so just know that it's not mine except for the parts that are." So yeah, in our capacity as responsible terrorists, it would probably be nice to find a way to say that, and ideally of saying it in a way that doesn't inherently fuck-up our timelessness by just filling-up our reference sections with a bunch of invalid pointers once the information about [chicken-variable] (for any value of said variable) decides to shuffle itself around and change the sentences it uses or even just [flutter-variable] off to somewhere else entirely. Not sure about the details now. We'll get there when we come to it. No need for the method to be super rigid or whatever. After all, if there's one thing all of us terrorists can agree on, it's that like... y'know... all things in moderation. Love and kisses (again (again)), ~The terrorists (again (again)). ```